vinyarb

The Internship has been spat on by critics for being a “two hour corporate video”, and “the longest advert I’ve seen in cinema”, but honestly, in a movie about having the opportunity to work in google, they’ve actually barely scratched the surface.

Vince Vaughn (also with screenwriting and producing credits) teams up once again with Owen Wilson (The Wedding Crashers) as two travelling watch salesmen, whose employer has winded down business (because, we apparently all tell the time on our iPhones now).

In need of a job, but without any practical skills, they go from googling for jobs to interviewing for an internship opportunity at Google. While they may have few skills, they do (or at least Vince) have the gift of the gab, and so they talk their way into the Internship, and from there on, its Life Experience vs Coding Creds.

The interns are split into groups, and naturally, Vince and Owen end up in the “rejects” corner, alongside 3 other outcasts, and its up to them to pull themselves together to achieve the impossible: A full time job offer with Google (only members from the top team will have this opportunity)

Bug decoding, App development, Quidditch (yes, quidditch) and of course converting a new customer to using Adwords are all different segments in which the teams will be scored against.

Rose Byrne provides the requisite eye candy, a 30ish executive at Google who puts in (too many) hours at the Googleplex, whom Owen manages to charm, by throwing out joke after joke of how she’s been missing out on a decade of bad dates.

The story may be a predictable plod, but Vince and Owen’s easy chemistry, with the gameness of the supporting team of nerds to play geek, help lift this otherwise run of the mill comedy into something fun.

To cap off this “two hour advert”, we even get a glimpse of Sergey Brin as… well, Sergey Brin.

Rating: 7/10

Google Interview Questions

Google is, or was (it has since been banned, or not taken into account in overall interviewee assessments), famous for asking impossibly difficult brainteasers to interviewees, to judge how they think and how they would attack at questions creatively.

Questions like “how many golf balls can fit into a bus” or “how much would you charge to clean all of San Francisco’s windows” are fair play alongside “what makes you think you’d fit in with Google”.

To that end, the film’s interview question was apparently a legit one as well.

Here’s how Vince and Owen answered the question “you’re shrunk to the size of a nickel and placed in an empty blender turned on, what do you do” it in the film. Hilarious.

Landing a job at the Goog can be such a great outcome for some people, that intense preparation, including gamifying for his interview is a worthwhile exercise.

Taking over the world

Google started as a technology company, its main product a search engine, dedicated to organizing the world’s information. That was in 1998.

Since then, Google has expanded massively into other spaces. They now have their hands in operating systems (desktop and mobile), email, productivity suite (Docs and Drive), Video (Youtube), and many others.

They have also moved on from a driving technology in the digital space to conquering the real world with Google Glass and their driverless car project. Whilst the bulk of Google’s revenue is still coming from their advertising stream, when Glass and the driverless cars kick off, I see their revenue numbers shooting for the sky.

Speaking of sky, Google founders Larry and Sergey are also heavily involved in renewable energy projects (which will definitely grow in importance as the world uses up its natural resources) and also, together with James-Titanic-Cameron, looking into ways of mining passing asteroids for resources.

I predict Google will become a much bigger mega-conglomerate in the near future. I just hope that by that time, they still remember to not be evil.